Multimeters are used for measuring a variety of parameters associated with electrical circuitry, such as currents, voltages, resistance and capacitance. A multimeter can be a handheld device useful for basic fault finding and field service work or a sophisticated bench instrument that can measure with a very high degree of accuracy. The instrument may be implemented with an analog meter deflected by an electromagnet or with a digital display such as an LCD (liquid crystal display) screen. While older analog multimeters might have basic accuracies of 5-10%, modern portable digital multimeters, or DMMs, may have accuracies up to ±0.025%.
Many modern digital multimeters enable a user to save a measurement for later retrieval and analysis. Typically, the instrument is configured such that a user presses a button or otherwise prompts the multimeter to save the measurement as it is taken. In some modern digital multimeters, a hold function is provided that freezes a displayed value once a stable reading is detected. Again, to prompt the hold function, the user must presses a button before taking a measurement and then presses that button once more to release the display.
Digital multimeters incorporate various tools such as the “save” and “hold” features for performing and analyzing different types of measurements and displaying measurement values in a digital format on a screen. Further capabilities and improvements are needed, however, in both hardware and software, to enable users to organize measurement information to be obtained by the instrument so as to operate the instrument efficiently, effectively, and safely.
The headings provided herein are for convenience only and do not necessarily affect the scope or meaning of the claimed invention.